YMMV / Phantom Investigators

• Accidental Aesop: "From Egypt, With Love" has one about not controlling your significant other in (or forcing someone into) a relationship, with Daemona telling Prince Ahkenamun that if he really loved Kira, he wouldn't be trying to control her mind so that she could leave with him.
• Accidental Innuendo: When the show began airing in Canada, the Montreal Gazette did an article on it and other cartoons premiering around the time that had female leads, one of them being Kim Possible. Daemona's placement near Kim was quite interesting, to say the least◊.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: A number of fans who ship Daemona and Casey together have interpreted her behavior in "Were-Dog", where Casey has a crush on minor character Terri, as just wanting him to be happy with the girl he likes. They also point out how while Kira and Jericho were the ones encouraging Casey to talk to Terri the most, Daemona just had her "be your cute and smart, adorable self" line about it and nothing else (the line itself having possible Ship Tease in there as well).
• Awesome Art: As per the studio's usual following Loopy, the overall look of the show was very unique and made itself stand out among other Saturday morning cartoons at the time, and had some amazing designs for the show's supernatural creatures.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Wad crashing the party in "Birthday Presence". Only lasts for a few minutes before the gang kick him out and he isn't seen for the rest of the episode.
• Canon Fodder: It's never explained how Kira, Jericho, and Casey got their powers—blame this on the show not getting a second season. Word of God says Jericho claims he developed his powers because he didn't want to do chores but the accuracy of this claim is unclear.
  • To say nothing about how the team formed in the first place since the first episode is In Medias Res.
• Creepy Cute: Jericho's pet morphing sprite from the end of "The Year Of The Snake".
• Cult Classic: While not at the same levels as Life With Loopy (not helping that unlike its predecessor, Phantom Investigators didn't go into reruns in the United States), the show managed to gain a small yet dedicated fan following shortly after the series was uploaded in full to various cartoon streaming sites years after the show was cancelled.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Professor Navarro, for overall being a cool, friendly mentor figure toward the gang. And having a Dark and Troubled Past didn't hurt, either.

• Fan Nickname: The show's fans on Tumblr tend to refer to Daemona as "Monie" for short.
  • Professor Navarro tends to be affectionately nicknamed "Dad Friend" by the fans.

• Fan-Preferred Couple: While admittedly this show doesn't have that big a fanbase, some die hard fans ship Casey/Daemona. It doesn't hurt that she's called him adorable a couple of times and that unlike his canon crush, Daemona appears in all the episodes and is a well-rounded character. Similarly Jericho/Kira is well-liked for involving well-rounded characters that appear in all episodes.
• Friendly Fandoms: Unsurprisingly, many fans of Life With Loopy are also fans of the show. Most fans actually found the show through Loopy after searching to see what else the show's studio had done (or vice versa for Phantom Investigators fans who live in a territory where Loopy was either never aired or not broadcast in it's entirety, such as Canada, or those who just never got a chance to see Loopy before).
  • Several Phantom Investigators fans overlap with Sailor Moon fans as well, with some pointing out similarities between the PIs and the Inner Senshi.
• Girl-Show Ghetto: The reason why Kids WB screwed it over. The show was meant for a gender neutral audience and had an equal amount of male and female protagonists on the team, with one of the girls (Daemona) being the leader. The series co-creator, Stephen Holman, even confirmed that WB was happy seeing a female character as the leader as they wanted to gain more female viewers. But soon the show started slipping with male audiences while the number of female viewers grew. Afraid of losing their status as being number-one with young boys, Kids WB quickly cancelled the show.
• Harsher in Hindsight: At the end of "Omega Pizza Pi", Daemona brings up that one day, she and the gang should investigate Professor Navarro, foreshadowing what would eventually happen in the final episode. Unfortunately it ended up being the final episode that aired in the US ("The Year Of The Snake" was the final one produced that made it to air, but the episodes were aired Out of Order).
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Aleksander Kocev, who voiced Jericho, became a dad in 2018. His daughter's name? Kira.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In "Year Of The Snake", Kira states that V-Buddies, a Tamagotchi Expy, was "so five years ago", while Casey remarked that they were becoming popular again. This episode aired in 2002. Two years later, Tamagotchis, which hadn't been around since the late '90s, started becoming popular again.
  • Stephen Holman was partially inspired to make the show after getting disappointed as a kid that the monsters in Scooby-Doo were always just people in suits and that the monsters weren't real. Around the same time Phantom Investigators started production and aired, Scooby-Doo began subverting itself in future series by making the monsters real.
  • In "Ghosts on Film", Daemona is annoyed with her father's belief that corn is her favorite pizza topping because she eats it so often, telling him that "Corn isn't a pizza topping, not even in California." Flash forward to present day where Mod Pizza, a pizza chain founded in 2008 that allows patrons to pay a single price and then top their pizzas as desired, offers, among other exotic toppings, corn (admittedly roasted rather than the straight from the can variety Daemona and her father were probably both thinking of but still).
  • The tool Daemona uses to identify threats is called the Specter-Detector. Initially, Danny Phantom was to be named Danny Phantom and the Specter Detectors before the initial premise was overhauled.
  • In the Life With Loopy episode "Alternative Hamsters", Loopy walks by a ride called the "Ghost Train" while at the carnival. It ended up looking pretty similar to the Haunted Train ride in "Haunted Dreams".
  • Two years before the show premiered, Aleksander Kocev (Jericho) narrated this Hot Wheels commercial. The line "you have to drive to survive" more or less sums up the race in "Demon Driver", the first episode.
• Les Yay: Often occurs between Daemona and Kira. They're the closest members of anyone in the gang, a few moments in both "From Egypt With Love" and "Haunted Dreams" make it look like Daemona is lowkey flirting◊ with◊ Kira◊, and it's notable that in "Haunted Dreams" when Kira announced she was quitting the team, Daemona was more upset than anyone else in the gang.
• Memetic Mutation: Casey's "Would this be an appropriate time to panic?" line from "Omega Pizza Pi" has started to become popular with "incorrect quote" blogs on Tumblr.
  • "From the creators of Life With Loopy!" (the common fan response to any moment in the show that gets especially dark)
• Misaimed Merchandising: A set of four toys for the show were made for Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. However due to a timing error between Kids' WB and the restaurant chains, the toys were sold in January 2002. The show wouldn't premiere until May and Kids' WB had not begun advertising it yet, leaving kids who got the toys at the time confused as to what it was meant to be a tie-in for.
• Moe: Jenny from "Haunted Dreams"
  • Daemona◊ is also rather adorable.
  • Casey. He's shy, kindhearted, and considered adorable in-universe by Daemona.
  • Kira and Jericho are pretty adorable as well.
• Narm: When the gang get sucked into the NetherRealm in "Stall Of Doom", they sound appropriately terrified. Some fans however found Daemona's scream to be unintentionally hilarious.
• Narm Charm: In "The Fifth P.I.", Daemona's reaction to PsyJack's "deal" with the gang to have them face off against warriors from the NetherRealm was "'Scusies!? Uh, how exactly is THAT fair?". As cheesy as the line sounds, it's also perfectly in-character for her and still makes the scene work.
• One True Threesome: It's not really popular but there are fans who ship the Phantom Investigators team as a poly ship. Given that all members are very close, it's not totally out of left field.
• Periphery Demographic: Most of the fans are teenagers and young adults, most of which unable to see the show when they were in the target audience due to it's early cancellation but gained interest in it due to its premise, animation, and/or growing up watching Life With Loopy and wanting to see the studio's other works.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: The fans tend to use "Caemona" for Casey/Daemona and "Kiracho" for Jericho/Kira.
• Retroactive Recognition: Courtney Vineys, known for playing Dusa and Aphrodite in Hades, started voice acting playing Daemona.
• The Scrappy: Wad isn't well-liked among fans, due to being a comic relief with an irritating voice.
• Ship Mates: The same fans that ship Casey/Daemona tend to ship Jericho/Kira as well.
• Shocking Moments: All throughout "Secrets Exposed!", from Navarro being a vampire to Daemona contacting her grandma through the NetherRealm.
• Special Effects Failure: While it almost never happens compared to Life With Loopy (justified as Loopy was made on a much smaller budget) and otherwise still manages to hold up fifteen years later, in "Were-Dog", you can briefly see where the sky backdrop cuts off as Casey leaves the park as a dog.
  • In the same episode when Jinxie grabs dog!Casey to bring him to Muir Woods, a hand is visible controlling dog!Casey's puppet.
• Squick: Wad kissing Daemona on the lips in "Secrets Exposed!".
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Professor Navarro served as a great mentor figure toward the gang and turned out to be a pretty plot-important character by the end of the series, yet only appeared in five of the show's thirteen episodes and only had a major role in one.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Daemona having a way to contact her grandmother in the NetherRealm would have been amazing to see more of- too bad the show wasn't picked up for a second season.
• Ugly Cute: Jinxie.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: In "Skating the Plank", we're supposed to buy that Jericho is bullying his skating rival because he's snappy when insulted and isn't unhappy when there's a chance said rival won't be boarding in the competition. But said rival spent most of his scenes bragging about his skills and belittling Jericho so it's hard not to side with Jericho when he complains that his friends scolding him isn't fair. Mitigated by the fact that the two boys make peace at the end of the episode but this is still present since Jericho never gets an apology from his friends.
• Values Resonance: The show's main source of praise was that it had a female character as the leader of a gender-neutral team in a show aimed at a gender-neutral audience, something that was rare when the show aired in 2002 and while not as rare as it was, still isn't quite commonplace in animated shows. It's notable that this was not made as the show's main selling point, nor was this pointed out in the show itself.
• Vindicated by History: Due to the show being cancelled early, it failed to gather any attention back in 2002 (though critics did like it) and was nowhere to be found online (save for two episodes). After the complete series finally surfaced online in late 2016, the show began to gain a small but dedicated cult following.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: (W)Holesome Products really stepped up their game from Life With Loopy (which also had great stop motion animation, but also more budgetary and technical limitations), making Phantom Investigators one of their best looking projects so far in both animation and special effects.
• The Woobie: Professor Navarro. He was turned into a vampire in the 1950s after getting bitten by a former friend who made a deal with the NetherRealm and became a vampire. As a result, he has to wear a Totem of Spirit Control at all times to maintain a human form, but renders him unaging. Since then, he'd had to watch his other friends die before him, which would ultimately include the kids.
  • Casey. He's a shy, nervous kid who's generally very unsure of himself, and Word of God confirmed that he lives in a rough neighborhood, his single dad is so busy with his job that he barely has time to spend with him, and it's unknown what happened to his mom.
  • Daemona in some episodes, such as "Omega Pizza Pi" when the debate team force her to do their chores in order to get a second chance at trying out (and then making fun of her for going through with it), and in "Secrets Exposed!" when it's shown that she still misses her grandma a lot, even if it's been a few years since she passed.

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